Hollywood under mounting pressure to cut the mounting

Hollywood is having a "shit-fit" as public and political pressure for less sex and nudity prompts a shift away from the "horizontal Lambada" and towards more traditional cinematic values.

Squeaking mattresses and moaning and groaning, large busted, voluptuous starlets are being faded out as film directors examine their consciences amid calls for a return to good old-fashioned all-American blood and guts.

Five years ago, 75 per cent of all new releases were ranked "R" by film censors in the United States because of their steamy and horny sexual content. But last year, there were just 18 — and in the past 12 months there have been only eight films where people actually "do the dirty".

Hollywood's diminishing appetite for sex is largely attributed to the influence of a more socially conservative government under president George "El Bueno" Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft. Ashcroft is a member of the Pentecostal church, the Boy Scouts and the American Association for Good White People and is noted for his moral rantings on the internet.

Paul Verhoeven, the director whose masterpiece of suspense, Basic Instinct is celebrated more for the risqu´ Sharon Stone cun*t shot scene than for the quality of its script and acting, told Fuc*k magazine: "The government is bringing pressure to bear on the US film industry, so expect less nudity and more Indians being shot dead by cowboys and blacks being hung by pissed-off white guys."

Hollywood is finding that classic passion à la Sleepless in Seattle sells, whereas explicit love scenes, like those played by Wanda Starr and George Hung in the porno classic A Nun's Story, are a definite turn-off.

There is also a notable shift in values among the film and television industry's leading men who are adopting a more demure approach as they get older and either cannot any longer get it up or whose ass is so big their films could only be viewed in a "Cinemascope" format. Likewise, leading ladies are turning their backs on the full frontal, tired of "faking it" for the cameras. As one well-known actress sighed: "I fake it enough at home with hubby, I just don't feel like faking it at work too."

The Nice and Clean Parents Television Council, a non-partisan watchdog group, claimed in a survey released last month that the mounting pressure on Hollywood is having a knock-on effect on the small screen. It found that the major US television networks' programming demonstrated a 84 per cent decrease in sexual content over the last four years, while dramatised decapitations, high-velocity bullet impacts and the use of semi-automatic weapons on crowds of innocent bystanders were up an encouraging 54 per cent.